Dead Science: A Zombie Anthology Page 7

  Once the samples were sufficiently crushed up, Craig crossed the room to the row of cages lining the wall and brought three back to the workbench, the cages labeled archimedes, prometheus and george respectively. He placed one sample in each of the cages, noting which rat got which mixture on his clipboard. Archimedes and Prometheus immediately began to devour the emerald granules, but Craig noticed that George seemed more reluctant to partake, sniffing warily at the dish and rubbing his nose with his paws.

  Craig pulled a small portable tape recorder from his pocket. "Subjects One and Two show no aversion to their individual mixtures, but George seems cautious. Perhaps an odor undetectable to humans?"

  But then slowly, tentatively, George stuck his nose into the dish and began to eat heartily.

  "Disregard," Craig said into the recorder with a smile.

  * * * *

  The next morning, Craig stumbled down the stairs bleary-eyed and still suffering the aftereffects of the infernal sauerkraut and anchovy pizza. His dreams had been plagued by horrible images of carnivorous pickles and talking cats. What he needed was some good news. He needed results, something to show for his three years of work besides a trail of dead rats and shattered Petri dishes. But his shoulders slumped when he glanced at the cages. Prometheus was lying on his back, his jaw slack and eyes closed.

  He swore, smacking the table with his palm and startling Archimedes, who was curled up in a ball beside his own dish, only a small amount of the sweetener sample remaining. Craig reached under the workbench to collect the small black leather bag containing his surgical kit, muttering under his breath, wondering what it could be this time, the kidneys or the heart? More than likely the kidneys. Certain forms of glycol could cause crystals to form in the kidneys, halting the body's ability to filter toxins, resulting in nephrotoxicity; a slow, albeit peaceful death.

  "Brilliant," he muttered, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "I just invented antifreeze."

  He picked up his recorder and pressed the record button. "Saturday, September 27th, 8:59 a.m. Subject Two, Prometheus, dead. Apparent cause of death seems to be nephrotoxicity; will perform a necropsy to be sure. Subjects One and Three show no signs of---"

  Just then, Archimedes began to shake on the floor of his cage, only a tremble at first, but rapidly developing into a violent convulsion. Craig's lip curled in revulsion as disgusting green foam began to bubble from the rat's mouth.

  He raised the recorder again and said, "Subject One is having some kind of . . . episode; appears to be seizing and expelling green foam from the mouth."

  Craig continued to watch---the recorder still rolling---and recoiled as Archimedes spasmed violently, his spine breaking with an audible crack. The rat gave a final shuddering squeak and became very still as thick blood began to ooze from every orifice.

  "Whoa!" Craig wiped sweat from his upper lip with the back of the hand holding the recorder. "The ASPCA is not going to like this."

  He clicked the recorder off and looked from one cage to the other, shaking his head despondently. The squeaking of an exercise wheel caught his attention and he looked over to the third cage where George ran contentedly on the blue metal wheel. Craig sighed, happy he had at least one healthy subject left to observe.

  He turned to get on with the unpleasant albeit necessary task of performing postmortem examinations on the dead rats.

  * * * *

  Craig wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his latex-gloved hand. He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus as he pushed aside Prometheus's intestines, probing the abdominal cavity until he found the right kidney. He sighed; the kidney was enlarged and badly bruised, a telltale sign of nephrotoxicity. He really didn't want to cut into the thing, already knowing full well what he would find, but for the sake of the experiment he had to be sure.

  "Okay, here we go," he said, raising his bloody scalpel. "You still with me over there, George?"

  At the end of the table, George clung upside down from the roof of his cage by his toes, moving in erratic circles.

  "Just let me know if I'm boring you," Craig muttered, returning to the necropsy. "We wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

  Craig pressed the tip of the scalpel into the enflamed tissue firmly, meanwhile narrating the procedure into the rolling tape recorder standing upright on the table to the right of the necropsy tray. Slowly, he cut down to the bottom of the kidney and turned the blade to widen the incision and expose the interior of the damaged organ. As he suspected, the interior tissue was red and littered with black clots. The inside of this kidney looked like it had been shredded.

  "Kidney exhibits signs of severe trauma and clotting," he said, addressing the recorder. "Apparent cause of death appears to be nephrotoxicity. Surprise, surprise."

  Craig shoved Prometheus's tray aside and reached for the one containing the gruesome carcass of Archimedes. As he drew the tray closer, the foul stench rising from the corpse overpowered him and he began to cough. The green foam around the rat's head had dried to a hard shimmering crust; Craig prodded it with his scalpel.

  "Subject One, Archimedes," he dictated to the recorder. "Cause of death is . . . undetermined. Subject exhibits massive hemorrhaging from the ears, mouth, nose and rectum. Spine appears to be broken somewhere in the lower thoracic vertebrae due to severe seizure-like activity. I'm making my primary incision now . . ."

  He sliced through the snow-white fur into the muscle below, splitting the sternum and exposing the lungs and heart, holding the cavity open with a pair of hemostatic clamps. He prodded the organs, peering closely at each in turn.

  "What the---?" he whispered, raising the volume of his voice to address the recorder. "Examination of the internal organs shows severe trauma to all visible major organ systems---respiratory, circulatory and diges---"

  THUMP!

  The noise startled him, cutting his dictation off mid sentence. He looked over and saw George, who only moments ago had been dangling upside down from the roof of the cage, lying very still on his back on the floor. He pulled the cage closer, peering through the bars at the unmoving rodent.

  "George?" he said.

  The rat didn't budge.

  Craig pulled a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket and threaded it through the cage bars, prodding George's body with the capped end. When this did not garner a response from the animal, he poked harder, hard enough the rock the rat's body back and forth. Again, it didn't move; George was dead.

  "No," Craig said, continuing to prod the rat. "No, no, no! This can't be happening to me! Wake up!"

  He threw the pen across the room and didn't even hear it clatter against a row of glass beakers over his own cursing. He pulled at his hair in two heaping handfuls as he paced the room.

  "Three years," he groaned. "Three freakin' years and what have I got? Rat poison!"

  He continued to mutter angrily to himself as he jerked open the refrigerator door and pulled out the bottle of vodka. He unscrewed the cap and threw it into a far corner of the basement. He raised the bottle to his lips and took a long pull of ice-cold booze. When he finally came up for air he grabbed an empty glass beaker and sat down at the worktable, shoving the two necropsy trays aside---the dissected remains of both rats falling to the floor in a clatter---and poured three fingers of booze into the beaker. He peered over the edge of the table at the carcasses on the floor and raised his beaker high into the air, the clear booze inside threatening to slosh over the rim.

  "Well, boys," he said. "Here's mud in your ruptured eyeballs." To the rat: "Sorry 'bout that, Archimedes."

  He placed the beaker to his lips and knocked the drink back in one large, painful gulp, then poured himself another.

  * * * *

  Craig awoke several hours later to a strangely familiar sound. He just couldn't place where he heard it before. The sound reached through the alcohol-induced haze clouding his brain and tickled his temporal lobe. Slowly, it dawned on him: it was the sound of tiny teeth gnawing on metal. Some
times the rats would gnaw on their cage bars when he forgot to feed them.

  How long have I been out? he wondered as he raised his head an inch and forced one eye to open.

  The gnawing continued steadily.

  "Shut up!" he said. "I'll feed you in a minute!"

  The gnawing ceased momentarily, but then resumed, louder and more persistent.

  "For crying out loud! I said I'll feed you in a min---"

  He opened his eyes and looked directly into the dull red eyes of George, who was gnawing incessantly on the horizontal bars of the cage separating the two of them. The rat had already removed the white paint from three of the bars, leaving the bare metal slick and glistening with blood and saliva.

  "George?" he whispered, unsure if what he was seeing was real or not.

  As Craig brought his face closer to the cage to get a better look at the animal he'd presumed to be dead, George's eyes narrowed and he began to bite at the bars with renewed vigor, his front paws jutting out through the wire, reaching for Craig's face.

  "What . . . ?"

  Craig reached for the cage door and George immediately stopped gnawing, following the human's hands with his eyes. Craig opened the door and slipped his hand through the narrow hole, reaching for the rat. As his fingers brushed the white fur on George's back, the rat whirled and lunged, sinking its long front teeth into the tender flesh between Craig's thumb and forefinger. He screamed and tried to pull his hand out of the cage, but George's jaws clamped down, keeping the hand trapped in the narrow opening.

  Finally Craig gave a panicked tug and screamed as a sizable chunk of flesh tore away from his hand, George's teeth still clenched together. Craig slammed the door hard and watched in horror as George turned his attention to the ragged chunk of bloody flesh, devouring it. Craig cursed, clutching his damaged hand to his chest, unaware of the blood soaking into his T-shirt. He tasted bile and vodka in the back of his throat as George finished consuming the flesh and resumed his previous activity of gnawing at the cage bars.

  Craig finally looked down at the tattered webbing of his hand and looked for something to wrap it in, finally settling for a torn section of his already-ruined shirt. He paused to pick up the overturned bottle of vodka, took a short swig, then poured the remainder onto his wound. He screamed through clenched teeth as the alcohol burned the exposed flesh. He crafted a makeshift bandage from the shirt and wound it tightly around his hand. He collapsed against the wall and stared at the devil rat trying to chew its way to freedom, yearning for another taste of his flesh, no doubt.

  "Son of a---" he gasped. "What's going on here?"

  He reached for the tape recorder still lying on the table and pressed the record button. The machine clicked in noncompliance. He tried again until he realized he'd let the tape run out while he drank. He flipped the tape over awkwardly with his injured hand and pressed the record button again; the recorder's red light blinked at him.

  "Subject Three," he gasped into the microphone. "Subject Three, believed to have been dead now appears to have merely been in some deep state of catatonia. Subject seems to have undertaken a dramatic shift in behavior, now exhibiting severe aggression and . . . and . . . the little creep bit me!"

  He looked down at the bloody rag covering the wound---which had now begun to throb---and decided he needed to go to the emergency room. He tried to stand, but the room began to spin and vertigo overtook him. He fell to the floor, grabbing the table for support, but only managed to knock over the beaker, sending it crashing to the floor in an explosion of glass. He was far too drunk to go anywhere, he realized, and he had already lost quite a bit of blood; there was no choice but to stay put until he sobered up enough to drive.

  So he sat there, cursing the rat until the drink reclaimed him and he fell into a fitful slumber.

  * * * *

  Craig awoke to the sound of a cage clattering to the floor. He immediately thought of George and pulled himself up to the table. The cage was still there, but on the left side was a ragged hole where the bars had been chewed through and bent outward; clumps of bloody fur clung to the jagged ends of wire. Craig panicked. Where was George?

  Somewhere off to his left was the frantic squeaking of rats and he remembered the sound that woke him. He ran around the table to the shelf on the wall where he kept the specimen cages and saw one of the cages on the floor, the plastic base broken and separated from the wire bars. He followed the sound of the squeaking until he found George, bloody and ragged, wrestling with a black and white rat. Socrates. It took him a moment to realize George was actually taking large, tearing bites out of Socrates's abdomen, paying no attention to the damage his opponent was dealing to his face.

  Craig reached into a nearby toolbox with his good hand and closed his fingers around the handle of a heavy wooden mallet. He hefted the mallet, testing the weight as he advanced on the two fighting rats, determined to bash George's brains in. Craig screamed as his legs flew out from under him and his vision exploded in a starburst of reds, blues, and greens as the back of his head smacked the cold concrete. Something wet coated the back of his head. Water? Blood? The idea that Socrates's water bottle had spilled onto the floor when the rat knocked over the cage drifted across his mind.

  Slowly, the colors faded and everything turned black.

  * * * *

  Someone tugged on his lip. At first the sensation was simply annoying, something to be batted at like a persistent housefly, but then it started to hurt. Suddenly the tugging sensation was replaced with wetness and for a moment Craig thought he was drooling, but then he tasted it: the coppery metallic taste of blood. He opened his eyes and found his vision filled with black, white and red fur.

  What's black, white and red all over? he thought with a childish giggle.

  He brushed his hand over his face and felt fur. His finger closed around a small furry body and he raised his head to look into the single red eye of George, the other side of his head nothing but an empty socket and bloody bone.

  "Hi, George!" he cried gleefully.

  He felt the tugging sensation on his lip again and looked down to see Socrates ripping pieces of his bottom lip off with his giant buck teeth.

  "Go away!" he shouted, swatting the black and white rat away with his free hand.

  A sharp pain in his bad hand brought his attention back to George, who was biting through the blood-soaked strip of cloth to get at the open wound.

  "Why you biting me, George?" said Craig dreamily as he began to stroke the rat's stripped head with his forefinger. "I will hold him and love him and squeeze him, and call him George."

  Suddenly Craig felt as though his chest was on fire; sharp stabbing pains tormented his left arm. He dropped the rat---which promptly went to work on his lips again---and clutched his arm. Deep in the back of his consciousness, the medical student in him was vaguely aware of what was happening, not that he could have done anything about it anyway. The last thing he saw before the world went dark again was Socrates and George sharing a picnic on his face.

  * * * *

  The next morning Craig's mother, Mary, unlocked the front door with her spare key and called out as she kicked off her shoes.

  "Craig, sweetie," she called. "Laundry day."

  She wrinkled her nose as she stepped from the foyer into the living room. A foul odor hung in the air and her gag reflexes brought a tablespoon of that morning's breakfast to the back of her throat. She surveyed the room until her eyes fell on the remains of the anchovy and sauerkraut pizza, a few flies buzzing above its surface.

  "Oh, Craig," she said. "I thought I brought you up better than that."

  Suddenly, a loud thumping sound from behind startled her. She whirled around. Her hands clutched her chest. The basement door shook in its hinges as the thumping came again, this time harder and louder. She took a tentative step forward.

  "Craig, sweetie," she said. "Is that you?"

  The door thumped again and for a moment she thought about leaving and ca
lling the police from the neighbor's house, but then she had a terrible vision of her baby boy, injured and unable to call out for help. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out for the antique door knob. She turned it slowly.

  She screamed as the door was forced open from the other side the instant the latch was slid back. She fell hard on her rear, tears welling up in her eyes as she bruised her tailbone. A low moaning caught her attention and she looked up at the ghastly monster standing in the doorway. There, in a torn and blood-stained T-shirt, his face and lips shredded by countless rat bites, was Craig. His eyes were a cloudy gray and vacant as those of a corpse.

  Mary cringed. "C-Craig? Sweetheart?"

  The ghoul that used to be Craig Vincent shifted his gaze to the cowering woman on the carpet and bared his teeth, an easy feat with his lips hanging in tatters. Mary held up her hands, but Craig was on her in an instant. She shrieked as his teeth sunk into the tender, wrinkled flesh of her throat. Her screams turned to blood-curdling gurgles as he tore away a long strip of flesh and chewed it slowly.

  "Mmmm," he groaned, blood dribbling down his chin. "Sweet."

  * * * *

  Walking With the Dead

  by

  Anthony Giangregorio

  Richard Dearborn slowly opened his eyes and looked around the room.

  It was bright white, the lights blinding him with the intensity of a supernova. He blinked a few times. Slowly, shapes came into focus.